Therapeutic devices can be used for a wide variety of reasons. As an example, a therapeutic device like the Utah Electrode Array (UEA) or the Utah Slanted Electrode Array (USEA) may be inserted into nerve tissue to allow the array to receive electrical signals from or deliver electrical signals to the nerve tissue. Such an array can be implanted in any type of nerve tissue. The UEA is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,361,760, which is hereby fully incorporated by this reference.
Many different types of therapeutic device insertion devices have been developed for inserting a therapeutic device. Previous insertion devices have two main limitations: they do not allow the insertion device to be spatially manipulated by hand, and the insertion devices are unable to retrieve the therapeutic device from the organic tissue. The insertion speed of previous insertion devices is relatively slow, for example 1-4 meters per second. This relatively slow insertion speed made it probable that complete electrode array insertion might not occur during insertion. Also, conventional techniques required the time consuming use of mechanical, robotic or other equipment to reliably position the electrode array prior to insertion.